A series of round tables with training elements on the application of the Protocols for advancing health care and human rights in closed environment started on 10-11 July in Zenica with a session prison doctors and senior medical staff from seven prisons in Bosnia and Herzegovina. 

These Protocols were recently completed within the framework of the Horizontal Facility for Western Balkans and Turkey ‘‘Enhancing human rights protection for detained and sentenced persons in Bosnia and Herzegovina''. It provides detailed protocols for the cooperation between different prison services for the six most commonly encountered health care issues in prisons: preventing self harm and suicide, treatment of psychoactive substance users, medical ethics, dispensing therapy, preventing spreading of communicable diseases and hunger strike. 

These Protocols directly respond to the CPT's long standing recommendation to local authorities: harmonised health care procedures across different prison jurisdictions in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Different categories of prison staff, medical security and treatment, will be introduced over the next 12 months to the substance of these Protocols and guided through the process of acquiring new skills, necessary to apply them in practice.